The Catena Media office is located in the Airport City bussines center in Belgrade and is designed for a team of curious individuals who make what is one of the most successful companies in the igaming industry. This is an open space office overlooking the New Belgrade panorama. The space is designed so that every employee has his own working and relaxing zone. The result is an office which is just like a game, full of tricks, obstacles, fun features, secret parts and surprises. This is how the spirit of the igaming industry is transposed to the elements and the way the space is used.

Neutral palette and raw materials are predominant in the office. The ceiling is painted black so the details and the installations on it are neutralized. The bleeched beech wall coverings give this working space a warm feel. The wooden wall in the entrance zone is also a large magnetic board which allows the visitors and employees to create graphics and messages out of magnets in different shapes and colours. This way they create a new welcoming message with each change.

There are no sharp angles in the space so the function zones easily gradate from one to another. Round glass partitions allow the transparency of the space so it doesn’t cut short. Besides the main open working zone which is filled with working tables, this space is characterized by rooms isolated with round glass membranes, including the main conference room and smaller rooms for individual meetings and calls.

The lighting that was designed specially for this space is a very important feature of the project, from standard hangers, adjustable lamps to built-in lighting in the hanging gardens above working tables. The tables, dividers, sofa, bench, stands, conference tables, the kitchen, counter, almost all of the furniture was also designed specially for this office.

The main recreational zone contains a special multifunctional stretching wall. Although coated with elements of fun and relaxation, each of the zones can be used as a working zone which allows the employees to change the position of their bodies multiple times during working hours, thus making the workday dynamics more pleasant. Several more elements such as the swings, table tennis and the wheel of fortune are dedicated to the break at work. The wheel of fortune which is also a whiteboard is situated in the busiest part of the office to entertain the employees.

The Elements is a private new build house in Hampshire, completed in early 2017 by Winchester based architects AR Design Studio. Adjacent to the stunning River Hamble and its popular marina, it is nestled within meadows rich in native wildlife. With a global collection of friends and family, the client required a large home in which to regularly host and entertain.

The home focuses on accommodating a number of guests, providing an experience of a ‘home-from-home’. It is hoped that the home will create lasting memories among visiting friends and family.

The massing for the home is divided into three interlocking blocks. Two blocks, one for guests, the other for the family, are connected by a central entrance block. The ground floor becomes a shared zone focused on leisure, socialising and entertainment.

The team used the path of the sun to carve out three garden zones, grouping lifestyle activities based on daily rituals. The leisure facilities of the pool, games room, gym and tennis court all receive strong morning light. The sun tracks to the central courtyard by midday, creating a sheltered sun- trap that is accessed by the entire ground floor. By the afternoon the sun has moved to the kitchen, lounge and patio, making this side of the house perfect for summer barbequing. Balconies and picture windows on the first floor extend view onto the wider context creating strong elevated visual connections with the gardens.

The shaded north contains the arrival and entrance to the property and is designed to compress your view. A wall guides visitors beneath a large cantilever into an entrance courtyard. From here you enter the house into a double height space that opens up to the view of the central courtyard and is framed by two staircases and walkway. This provides access to the homes main spaces and connects the guest and family blocks. Glazing is extensively used throughout the house to blur the distinction between garden and house and provides connecting views across the open, free-flowing plan and to the gardens beyond.
A steel frame forms the hidden structure that facilitates the glazing and impressive cantilevers. The house is clad with Kebony timber and Vande Moortel Linea Bricks, providing earthen tones that complement and blend with the surrounding gardens and rural setting.

The design focusses on sustainability and responding naturally to the elements of the site. Large roof overhangs provide passive solar shading in summer and the expanses of sliding low-e glazing provides passive ventilation and natural solar gain during the winter. A ground-source heat-pump acts as the primary form of heating for the house and the pool, with solar thermal panels providing an additional source. The building has two thick layers of insulation and air-tight construction. The holistic approach to sustainability allows to the house to be as self-sufficient as possible.

The welcoming feel of The Elements is a result of a close collaboration between the client and the studio on all aspects of the project. Large comfortable seating areas provide space for an abundance of guests. In the arrival hall, the heart of the building, a generous dining table hosts 14 plus people. The kitchen compliments the geometry of the building extending the line of sight from the breakfast counter through the hall towards the tennis courts. Each element uses the same tones and colours found across the building and the site, further connecting visitors to their location.

The Elements represents an ambitious taste of shared living, designing not only for the clients but for their family and friends. It has become a perfect reflection of the clients dream; a living, breathing space, seamlessly connected to its surroundings.

AR Design Studio is an RIBA chartered architects practice, based in Winchester, Hampshire, specialising in elegant and imaginative contemporary new homes, extensions, renovations and multi-plot developments. AR Design Studio’s architectural expertise and flair has been recognised by winning a number of prestigious industry awards including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 2012 Regional Award, Daily Telegraph Small House of the Year Award 2014, the RIBA South Award 2017, American Architecture Award 2017 and the UK Property Awards 2017. With a comprehensive knowledge of planning, AR Design Studio has built a stunning portfolio of completed residential projects.

1330 Brook Street house is the latest example of Studio 804’s mission to build creative sustainable housing in established, but marginal urban neighborhoods. 1330 Brook Street is convenient to the vibrant cultural district of downtown Lawrence and to the public transportation system and the bike trails that link the town. It is less than a block from the East Lawrence Recreation Center which offers a wide variety of services and is across the street from Brook Creek Park and its open green spaces, playgrounds and large mature trees.

It is a three bedroom, two bathrooms, 1,300 square foot house that makes extensive use of salvaged material and minimizes energy consumption. Sixteen net metered solar panels on the roof provide up to 4.8 kilowatt-hours of power and will generate enough electricity to operate the house at net zero energy use over a calendar year. It was designed to be clearly contemporary while still fitting into its working-class surroundings of small, unassuming homes.

Studio 804 has always been willing to build on brownfield and undesirable infill sites in urban neighborhoods. A vacant lot with a seemingly permanent for sale sign does not reflect well on the health and safety of a neighborhood and can curb property values and nearby development. Often these sites remain vacant because they come with a unique hurdle that requires extra effort to get a project started. In the past, we have built on an infill site with buried gas tanks as well as on top of what was once a landfill. The house on Brook Street was built on two small lots in the flood plain of Brook Creek. Since it is nearly impossible to get loans to buy – or to insure – a new house in a FEMA flood plain the previous owner had built up the property grade with compacted earth to create buildable ground above the flood plain. It sat empty for a long time as an odd looking, weed covered mound of dirt. We saw it as an opportunity. Since it cost less than a typical vacant lot in the established neighborhoods of Lawrence this would make it easier to target an innovative, LEED Platinum certified building that was still relatively affordable.

The insulated metal panels that distinctively clad the house were rejects from the construction of a tennis center being built at the time on the western edge of Lawrence. The panels were perfectly functional but had been rejected due to an issue with the paint that we could resolve. When we began to shape a design around these panels we saw the parallel between Studio 804’s mission and the mission that inspired the prefabricated steel Lustron houses that were developed in the United States after World War II. They were a response to the lack of housing for veterans returning from the war. We wanted the house at 1330 Brook Street to share the spirit of the Lustron design as it serves as a model for how self-sustaining, low maintenance, fully accessible houses can be built for everyone in the future as resource management becomes increasingly necessary.

Being a speculative project we wanted to assure that the small house was comprised of flexible spaces that give the owner control over the use and layout of rooms. It is also ADA compliant and allows unrestricted mobility which also creates a house that will suit the aging baby boomer population that is now looking to downsize and centralize. The kitchen and bathrooms are the only defined part of the plan, otherwise all the spaces can be used in multiple ways. Being built in the flood plain meant the house could not have a basement and since there was to be no attic we had to assure sufficient storage inside the house. Since the north wall has few windows it has extensive built in storage cabinets.

To minimize energy consumption, the design uses passive strategies for lighting and to control heat gain and heat loss. The bedrooms, kitchen and living room are arranged along the south wall. At the south and west elevations, the roof extends over the outdoor walkway and patio spaces and is supported by custom made steel tube screens. The deep overhangs and the screens act to manage the amount of direct light that enters the house. They are designed to mitigate heat gain during the summer while still allowing daylight to enter. In the winter, the direct sun light can enter the house and warm the mass of the polished concrete floors. The north wall is highly insulated and has just the openings needed for cross ventilation and daylighting. It acts as a shield against the cold north winds to which the site is exposed.

The plumbing is WaterSense-rated and the Italian-made kitchen appliances are energy star compliant. The light fixtures are fitted with LEDs. Insulation includes both rigid and blown-in cellulose and exceeds the U.S. Green Building Council LEED-rating standards.

A signature element of the house is “the notch” where one enters the house. The covered walkway along the south side of the house widens at the living area creating an outdoor room that acts as a foyer for the house and as a screened patio for outdoor seating. It is visible to the living room, kitchen, dining area and flex room through floor to ceiling walls of insulated glass which are supported by a custom-made steel structural frame. Both steel and glass are highly recyclable materials. The soffits of the roof overhangs are finished with western red cedar boards. We milled them from logs once used for railroad bridge trestles that were built in early days of the logging industry. They had been recently dismantled by the United States Forest Service and the material made available on the secondary market. The interior is filled with high quality and long-lasting materials and components. A hanging pendant in the dining room is an original Louis Paulsen fixture, crafted in Denmark and purchased for reuse in the project. The red oak European kitchen and bathroom cabinets are topped with cold-rolled steel countertops. To minimize energy consumption, the design uses passive strategies for lighting and to control heat gain and heat loss. The bedrooms, kitchen and living room are arranged along the south wall. At the south and west elevations, the roof extends over the outdoor walkway and patio spaces and is supported by custom made steel tube screens. The deep overhangs and the screens act to manage the amount of direct light that enters the house. They are designed to mitigate heat gain during the summer while still allowing daylight to enter. In the winter, the direct sun light can enter the house and warm the mass of the polished concrete floors. The north wall is highly insulated and has just the openings needed for cross ventilation and daylighting. It acts as a shield against the cold north winds to which the site is exposed.

HKA | Hermann Kamte & Associates unveils their proposal for a wooden residential tower in downtown of Lagos; the most populated city in Africa with more than 16 million inhabitants. The design of the skyscraper of more than forty thousand square meters was directed by the Architect by Hermann Kamte, CEO and founder of HKA | Hermann Kamte & Associates. The architect expresses that this architectural concept of wooden tower aims to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants of the city of Lagos.

The tower is a residential unit that develops around cultural and urban themes. The project located in Ikoyi, a luxury residential area, is built on top of an existing structure. The challenge was “How the roof of today can be the plot of tomorrow? How to build a new city above the existing one? What is plan B for the future? ”. The project focused on the reinvention of a new urban fabric with the hypothesis of a solution and sustainable construction with wood. In addition, the city has forest resources that can produce timber.

The existing “Abebe Court” is a complex of four structures. It consists of 4 bedrooms and 3 apartments spread over 4 floors. There are amenities: swimming pools, gym, tennis courts, children’s playground, parking lots, water treatment and sewage treatment and electricity generators.

The tower is organized in three blocks above an existing structure. Each block consists of six current floors. The envelope of each block corresponds to a particular Yoruba tribal symbol. The blocks are connected to each other by gathering space and sports or recreational activities for residents. From the bottom to the top, there are housing units with 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms.

The height of the tower allows to benefit from natural elements such as ventilation and lighting. The floors are surrounded by greenery and terraces. The building envelope is as sunscreen, beyond its cultural significance.

The greenery in the space creates beauty, sensitivity, naturalness, aesthetics and comfort for the residents. With its microclimate effect, it is a giant lung in the urban space which helps to reduce the surrounding pollution. The terraces allow you to enjoy the sky and the city, the beautiful landscape. The roof is a landscaped and living space; it has a restaurant and a garden.

In this project, the approach of the architect team was made in the consideration of; cultural parameters, the predominant and historic human group of the city of Lagos: Architecture and Yoruba Culture.

About HKA | Hermann Kamte & Associates

HKA | Hermann Kamte & Associates is an award-winning Architectural firm based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. As a young practice their projects are principally based in Africa; including Nigeria; Niger; Chad; and Cameroon.

Construction works have begun on the Bora Residential Tower in Mexico City. Commissioned in 2015 by Nemesis Capital, a Mexican company committed to building new communities of the highest standards, the tower is within Santa Fe, an important business district in the west of Mexico City with a rapidly growing community that includes 3 universities and the regional offices of Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Roche and Amazon.

The Bora Residential Tower is a short walk from local schools, theatres, cafes and restaurants, as well as the new Santa Fe Transit Hub that will offer a 5-minute train journey into Observatorio Station, connecting with the city’s metro network when the Toluca commuter rail line opens next year.

Being adjacent to the 28 hectare parklands, lakes, sports fields, basketball and tennis courts of La Mexicana park, the largest new public space created in Mexico City for 50 years, the tower has been designed to provide excellent levels of natural light and ventilation, with the apartments optimising Santa Fe’s extremely comfortable environmental conditions of prevailing winds and mild annual temperatures.

With more than 50 floors, Bora will be the highest residential tower in Mexico City and incorporates over 220 apartments of one, two and three bedrooms. Each floor houses a variety of unit sizes to create an integrated and diverse community of families, first-time homeowners, professionals and retirees.

The arrangement and layout of the apartments maximises natural light, ensures privacy and offers panoramic, double-aspect views from all units that are also surrounded by balconies, providing residents with outdoor living areas to enjoy Santa Fe’s mild, elevated subtropical climate.

The distribution of varied apartments across each floor defines the formal composition of the tower. The six apartment layouts surround a central core and are extruded vertically, with the tower’s façade articulating the folds and pleats created from the juxtaposition of these six volumes. A sense of dynamism is introduced by the geometric configuration of the balconies which follow a harmonic variation that is optimised to ensure the best use of these outdoor living areas.

The tower tapers inwards at its base to increase the areas for leisure, recreation and entertainment located beneath ‘swirling’ canopies that transfer the surrounding streetscape vertically, echoing the dynamism expressed throughout the façade. Civic spaces with restaurants and shops at street level will enhance the growing Santa Fe community.

The tower’s structure has also been designed for optimum flexibility and ductility, as well as an overall reduction in its weight, to best respond in seismic conditions, with the ten-storey canopies at its base providing additional lateral stability.

The studio has been designed to meet the sculptor’s and painter’s needs which include work, hobby, play and storage. It also needs to be turned into a gallery or guest room when needed. With these in mind, the studio has to be as flexible, open and airy as possible.

Under the timber flooring hides a sunken bed which is accessible by lifting a section of the floor mechanically. The birch plywood wall panels on both sides of the kitchenette slide open to reveal an artist’s wash-up sink and a shower room. Hidden within a full height storage cupboard stands a folded table-tennis table, where another of the clients’ passion has been included. Folding desk has been incorporated to allow for a bigger space when it is not being used.

The light-filled space with opening skylights, windows and glazed sliding doors leads onto a heated veranda where the family gets to appreciate their garden and enjoy outdoor dining whenever possible. The location of the studio benefits from direct sunlight and timber louvered canopy and automatic roller mesh blind have been introduced to ensure that the studio and veranda get ample shading and not overheated on sunny days.

Anthracite zinc and Accoya wood cladding, concealing an insulated steel and timber structure, have been chosen for their durability and stability and longevity and they work well with the existing brick back wall of a warehouse.

A Second homes are about creating an oasis from the hectic pace of urban city life. A site blessed with vegetation and seasonal lake provided the perfect setting for this project. At the entrance were a clump of trees that provided for a grand entry and also created just the necessary buffer for the house from the Main Street. The driveway snaked its way past the canopy of trees to the entrance/arrival court where you are received by a curved stone wall.

Designing in tropics is about creating the right balance of open and closed spaces. The sun and other elements can be unforgiving in these conditions.

The house has been designed in clusters of program held together with a strong circulation spine with the most of the facilities addressing the pool in the centre of the house. The living dining pavilion is a glass box which has a deck extension onto the pool on one side and private lawn on the other side bound by the arrival court curved stone wall. This court is further enhanced with a water body fed by a gargoyle that emerges from the curved wall.

The guest pavilion opposite the living pavilion houses 4 bedrooms with their attached toilets. The pool bar and outdoor dining flanks one end of the pool while three spouts edge the other end. Directly above the outdoor dining is the master bedroom with its attached bathroom. The plunge pool attached to this room is created as a getaway for the client and overlooks the lake.

The children’s room is designed as a concept of box within a box and is cantilevered. The wooden box sits inside the glass box.

At the far end of the pool is the jacuzzi and sunken seating which overlooks the main lawn which has the tennis court at the end of the property. The games pavilion is adjacent to the jacuzzi area.

The furniture has been kept aesthetically appealing but importantly practical and strong emphasis on needing less maintenance. Surfaces are kept to withstand the severity of the climate. The use of natural stone, natural wood, lighting which is led driven and abundance of landscape allows the bungalow to be endorsed as ecofriendly.

Our design process is about creating moments…elemental and episodically unfolding. The circulation within the house and spaces between functions need to follow a sequence of activity. The volume of spaces is again defined by the function.

The large open spaces, fluidity and transparency between spaces, the idea of natural landscape interspersed with built form are all metaphorical for the client’s nature.

The Market Hall is a sustainable combination of food, leisure, living and parking, fully integrated to celebrate and enhance the synergetic possibilities of the different functions. A secure, covered square emerges beneath an arc, conceived as an inversion of a typical market square and its surrounding buildings. During the day it serves as central market hall, after hours the hall becomes an enormous, covered, well lit public space.

New laws in the Netherlands require covered areas for traditional open air meat and fish markets due to new hygien constraints. MVRDV posed two questions in response to these challenges: ‘Can we use this operation to evolve the market typology as well as densify the the city centre?’ and ‘Can we increase quality as well as density of programming at Blaak?’

The Market Hall is part of the new inner city heart of the Laurens Quarter, the original pre-war centre of Rotterdam. The building is a sustainable combination of food, leisure, living and parking, all fully integrated to enhance and make the most of the synergetic possibilities of the different functions. The hall is formed from an arch of privately developed apartments, strategically allowing private investment and iniative to provide a public space. The result is a covered square which acts as a central market hall during the day and, after closing hours remains lively due to restaurants on its first floor.

The apartments follow strict Dutch laws regarding natural day-light: all rooms that require natural light are situated on the outside. Kitchens, dining rooms and storage are positioned at the market side, establishing a connection to the market. The front and backside are covered with a flexible suspended glass façade, allowing for maximum transparency and a minimum of structure, which will be the largest of its kind in Europe.

As a division of the international media and advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group, the Octagon Agency is one of the premiere agencies in the United States that develops and manages sports, entertainment and event marketing and advertising. Octagon commissioned TPG Architecture, based in New York, to update and redesign their flagship office in suburban Washington DC, for approximately 125 employees. TPG has a longstanding relationship with Interpublic, and has designed many other of its media companies.

The overarching directive from Octagon was to provide a timeless, contemporary office interior while at the same time reflecting the excitement and dynamic nature of their clientele; with accounts like Michael Phelps, Felix Hernandez, Piers Morgan and The Grammy Awards, there is always something interesting, fun and/or enticing going on in the office.

Located in McLean, Virginia, where the company leases 25,000 square-feet in a building owned and mostly occupied by Gannett Media. It’s an unusual building, designed by KPF in the 70’s, with a narrow, elbow shaped footprint, which allows for many window offices but has an awkward floorplate at several points as well.

TPG’s design team developed several strong interventions to a traditional layout with private offices along corridors and window walls, focusing design efforts at the entrance sequence and around the company’s conference rooms. They also paid special attention to the “Octapen,” an open, public space on the south wall that includes a pantry, lunch and eating areas, a pool table, video games and a custom-designed ping pong table. The introduction of large-scale graphics, designed by TPG’s in-house graphics department, brought the agency the color and visual interest that they had requested.

A custom-designed reception desk with a bold Octagon graphic greets everyone coming in: here the number 8 in red works as the letter “G”, a double entendre on the name. A palette of white, bright red, black and wood is established at reception, and it is repeated throughout the office. The wall behind reception and the adjacent wall burst with a swoop of black, a huge red number 8, and oversized images of people playing tennis, playing basketball, speaking, playing ice hockey, entertaining, snowboarding, etc.; it is a very energizing graphic. Although most of TPG’s work is designing interiors and architecture, the firm has a very active graphic design staff that enhances and adds branding to many corporate spaces with environmental graphics. As people move into the space, a shallow seating area, furnished with mid-century modern furniture, backs the smallest of three conference rooms, all of which have glass walls so that meetings and conferences are all very visible.

Moving through the conference rooms, the designers added more graphics in the form of a bright red wall outside of the largest conference room, which is the backdrop for a grid of Octagon’s client photos and constantly changing images.

The project consists in a new tennis hall building with three new covered tennis courts and and new club house including changing rooms, fitness room, office, restaurant and bar with wide covered terrace.

This tennis club design is directly inspired by people flow in and through the building, considered as tennis ball dynamic trajectories, flowing from point to point, from function to function.

The new building is generously day-lighted with sky domes and a special colour treatment of the floor increases day light effect. Areas where natural light falls are treated with a beige resin, the room borders and corners are treated with deep orange resin. Both are linked with a rough handmade colour gradient. The result is a kind of augmented reality, providing a feeling of sunny weather whatever is the meteo.

All the furnitures were designed for this project, each of them is a unique piece. Master piece is the 777cm long bar, made of solid wood slices. One edge sits on the floor and the opposite edge is suspended from the roof and all under space length stays free.